


What Goeth Before

by gardnerhill



Category: Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms, Sherlock Holmes (BBC Radio), Sherlock Holmes - Arthur Conan Doyle
Genre: Amnesty Challenge, Community: watsons_woes, Gen, Prompt Fic, Radio, Watson's Woes July Writing Prompts 2015
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-08-03
Updated: 2015-08-03
Packaged: 2018-04-12 17:44:05
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 641
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4488795
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gardnerhill/pseuds/gardnerhill
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A rickety stepladder, a weakened and stubborn Army doctor, and a clumsy dog. What could go wrong?</p>
            </blockquote>





	What Goeth Before

**Author's Note:**

> For the July 2015 Watson's Woes Promptfest Amnesty Prompt #9, _**Domestic Hazards**_ _. Research shows that an overwhelming percentage of accident-related injuries happen in the home. 221B is far from an exception._ This story takes place during the BBC Radio adaptation of “A Study in Scarlet.”

Stubborn, pig-headed pride. That’s the only deduction one could make – and the only medical diagnosis.  
  
I should have listened to Holmes from that first time when he told me to sit down and rest. He’d accurately deduced that I shun the pity of others and despised the frail, treacherous transport my flesh had become.  When we moved in that very first day, he was kind enough to turn that shameful moment of near-collapse into an excuse to provide a miniature lecture on the history of his violin (while I sat and caught my breath) followed by examples of how beautifully he could play, from Bach to “Buttercup.”

I should also have taken note of Holmes’ hesitation and flat response when I first told him about my bull-pup. It was a harbinger of our time together – Beecher, the most phlegmatic little chap around me, never gave Holmes a moment’s peace, leaping up to worry at his ankles at every opportunity and never ceasing despite all my scolding him.  
  
And it all culminated a few weeks into our shared-lodgings arrangements, with me on the top-rung of a none-too-steady stepladder (cajoled from Mrs. Hudson’s girl) with an armload of heavy medical volumes to stow on a top shelf when Holmes passed my doorway – and Beecher, who’d been peacefully dozing on my carpet, tore out of my room to attack his Nemesis, crashing into the ladder on the way out.  
  
By great good fortune I landed mostly on my bed. But my head got a smart knock against the brass railing, I wrenched my weak leg, and I received a long bruise where the heavy books slammed into my side on the way down. In short, I had been so hell-bent on proving I was no invalid that I turned myself into a true invalid for several days after that.  
  
Several things came out of that household calamity:

  1. I was no longer permitted to borrow Mrs. Hudson’s household equipment without her direct input. (I also made good and sure that the tearful Bridget did not get sacked by her wrathful employer for her role in my idiocy.)
  2. Beecher was out the door – fortunately, into the arms of my friend Stamford who gave the little fellow a good home that suffered no appearance of his enemy’s ankles.
  3. For the immediate future I was not to lift another thing heavier than the novel I was currently reading unless Holmes was present to assist me. “That’s what servants are for, daft man,” Mrs. Hudson said sharply. “One word to me and I’d have had the boy up to do that for you – and he’d have been a good deal lighter on that rickety thing.”
  4. I finally learned to let my body recuperate at the rate it chose and not at the rate I wished.



 

That one has been the hardest one to learn. For while I recovered a good deal of my health in the months that followed, I never truly gained back the robust corpus that had been mine before Maiwand. I am more apt to sicken than Holmes and take longer to recover, and my weaker limbs mean that certain tasks are beyond my ability to handle alone.  
  
But I am also a fortunate man, blessed with a friend whose discernment of the unsaid is unrivaled in all of England – one who was great-hearted enough never to utter any variation of “I told you so” after my completely foreseeable mishap, one whose assistance is so swift and invisible that I would miss it now were he to stop, and one who has made it clear that any aid he gives me honours rather than burdens him.  
  
That led to the best thing that came about after my spill (over which both of us now laugh with affection):

        5.     I stopped being ashamed of asking for help.


End file.
